The proliferation of electronic office systems has created a need for exchanging and storing information. One reason for this proliferation is the popularity of E-mail networks. Electronic mail networks permit a network of communicating users to transmit documents (e.g. text, graphics, facsimile, voice, etc.) from one user to another. It is well known in the art that many of the text and word processors used for this purpose are implemented using a family of popular processor chips manufactured and marketed by Intel, Motorola, and others.
When E-mail is sent, the recipient often replies to the note, and the destination address field for the reply is automatically filled in with the address of the originator. However, the originator often wants the recipient to reply to a third party. Thus, a method is needed to allow automatic addressability by the recipient to that third party. As used herein, the term "downstream recipient" refers to any such third party recipient.
An E-mail item generally comprises two essential parts: (1) the content, the information one is trying to communicate to recipients, and (2) attributes, for example in a heading. Attributes includes such things as the identification of recipients, the date the E-mail message was created, time that the message was sent, the sender or originator, a title or name for the message, and other information about the document that the recipient may be interested in. Such attributes are normally sent with the E-mail message as a profile, and may be referred to herein as an Interchange Document Profile (IDP).
In the past, the Interchange Document Profile that has been provided by all vendors has failed to provide a capability for an originator to dictate subsequent routing for any document sent. Carbon copy recipients have been specified but this falls short of providing multi-stage routing. Thus, there remains a need for a method and system for automatic routing of electronic mail to sender-selectable third parties.